Well, folks, my time in Nairobi has come to an end. I'm writing this one from Dulles Airport on my way back to Cambridge! (It seems a little anti-climactic, I know, to write a final blog post after leaving Kenya. But my power was out all day Friday, so I had no choice.)
The past eight weeks have flown by quickly. I think this is partly because of the excitement of being in a new place, and partly because I've been traveling so much within the region. The past four weeks have especially been a blur: a hike up Mount Kenya, trips to Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania, and meetings all over the place.
In the end, living in Nairobi has come as a pleasant surprise: I like it there now. Initially, I didn't. The traffic, pollution, fear of crime, and utter lack of charm all added up to a crappy first impression. But since then, the city grew on me. The food has been a major plus (Japanese! Ethiopian! French!), as have the benefits of Swahili-only-when-you-feel-like-it. Meeting other people has probably been the best part, though. This city is full of great, warm people doing fascinating and important work in areas I find interesting - politics, international development, reporting, impact investing and social enterprise. The people I spend time with outside of work are uniformly passionate about what they do, which I find refreshing and inspiring at the same time. And I've made some good friends.
My work has also been pretty positive overall. My team at the IFC gave me a lot of responsibility and some very interesting projects to work on. I'm glad to have played an early role in shaping the East African Community's common market strategy, a political and economic goal that I really believe in. It's been especially interesting traveling to the EAC capitals to meet with officials there. The development challenges and preoccupations of the five member states couldn't be more different, from creepily efficient Rwanda to backwards-and-we-know-it Burundi. On top of the work itself, I've really had fun with my coworkers - they're smart, welcoming and talented people. They've taught me a lot about avoiding, flattering, convincing and otherwise dealing with difficult public officials and antagonistic clients - I hope I've picked up some of that from them. The team even threw me a very nice sendoff lunch at my favorite place on Thursday, which I thought was a nice gesture.
Although I'm sad to have left, I have two great things to look forward to right away. Tomorrow, I'm going to the wedding of two good friends in Cambridge, then I'm visiting the beautiful Stephanie in San Francisco. The expectation of things to come was almost enough to dull the pain of tonight's 30-something hour journey back to Massachusetts (although it does not remedy the sad fact that I watched Prince of Persia to stave off in-flight boredom.)
So this will be the last Tanzlines post for a while. In terms of exciting African adventures ahead, the next one will probably be next January in southern Africa. Hang tight until then!
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
Kneeling Before Ngai
On Monday evening, I arrived back from a four-day hiking trip to Mount Kenya, the second-highest mountain in Africa*. A group of friends and I decided to summit Lenana, the third highest peak on the mountain (4,985 meters) and the highest peak accessible to non-technical climbers. Our guide was Will Wamaru, an excellent and experienced guide who recently opened launched his own travel company.
Mount Kenya is a sacred mountain for many Kenyans. Several ethnic groups from the Central Highlands - the Meru, the Maasai and the Gikuyu - believe that the mountain is the home of Ngai, the supreme god and creator of the world. Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President, wrote a book, Facing Mount Kenya, which details the Gikuyu relationship with the mountain and Central Highlands culture.
This was an auspicious weekend to climb the mountain. Earlier this month, Kenyans population voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new national Constitution. Although we hadn't planned it that way, Friday (the day we began our ascent) was the day when the President, Vice-President and Prime Minister of Kenya formally "promulgated" the document and put into effect the Second Republic. Partly because current President Kibaki is Gikuyu, and partly out of Kenyan national pride, a small team of local climbers carried a copy of the Constitution to Lenana peak immediately after the signing. Because of the number of tourists on the mountain and the time we left, we stood to be among the first forty foreigners to see the special copy on top of Mount Kenya.
Of course, there's a catch: the whole climbing thing.
The obvious thing to write here is that the hike was wonderful: a pleasantly rugged trek, with a smiling, pink-cheeked Al marveling at the views from the summit and reveling in the achievement of getting to the top. But I won't lie: it was physically exhausting and, for at least a day, miserable.
The first day was fine. It was just a four-hour climb through light rain on a gravelly road, covering roughly 600 vertical meters. The first lodge we stayed at was similarly decent: a bit wet, but the food was great and the bunkbed dorm was fairly comfortable. I realized that we could have been in tents.
The second day was much tougher: a nine-hour climb through mostly decent weather, covering 900 vertical meters. We had to cross a number of ridges and some very swampy terrain, so there were a lot of ups and downs. Still, it was about 100 meters an hour in terms of vertical climb, which didn't sound awful to me.
I was doing very well until lunch when I got hit with altitude sickness all of a sudden. It's difficult to predict its symptoms for each person, but almost everyone in our group got it in one form or another. For me, it started as an intense headache, which I assumed was similar to a migraine. My temples throbbed, my head hurt and I felt a bit dizzy. As we got above 4,000 meters (2.5 miles), my breathing became very labored and I started coughing a lot. The rest of the group were facing similar things, so our pace slowed quite a bit.
The big advantage to the second day was seeing major shifts in climate and vegetation. Even at higher altitude, there's lots of interesting fauna as well: rock and tree Hyraxes (a sort of fat capybara-like thing related to an elephant); colobus monkeys; big grey monkeys that like to steal; lone buffaloes; crested eagles and buzzards.
The lodge at the second night was not a pleasant experience. I didn't have much of an appetite, although I did eat after taking half of a friend's Diamox, an altitude-sickness medicine. When I tried to sleep, I couldn't do it at first. I also had strange chills even though I could feel that my skin was hot. Weird! But in the end (probably thanks to the Diamox), I managed to fall asleep around 11 pm.
Before long, it was 2 am - time to get up for summit day. Our guide's biggest mistake was probably telling us that the final ascent would be easier than the previous day...
It was not. Whereas Day 2 involved a climb of 100 meters per hour (with an average altitude of 3,700), the summit climb involved a climb of 200 vertical meters per hour (at an average of 4,600 meters above sea level). This does not sound like much, but if you take into account safety stops, it turns into about 4 meters (vertical) per minute when you're actually climbing. At a high altitude, when hiking on ice or scree, this is pretty fast. By around 4 am, our conversation had stopped completely. We were like a team of foreign zombies trudging up the mountainside in the darkness. Or something.
After four hours we reached Lenana peak. It was pretty cool: a frozen Kenyan flag, some plaques of people that died, and a brand new glass-metal-clay shrine to the Second Republic, copy of the Constitution inside. We were probably among the first couple of dozen people ever to have seen it there.
Equally (ok, more) enjoyable, was a prank I played on John, one of the guys in our group. Some of you will already be familiar with the viral drinking phenomenon of "Bros Icing Bros." As those of you who are/were/know a 17-19 year old girl are aware, Smirnoff Ice is a sugary, lightly alcoholic, bottled drink (or alcopop) consumed almost exclusively by members of that demographic group.
But thanks to the recent Icing phenomenon, however, it has become normal for guys to foist a bottle of Smirnoff Ice on an unsuspecting friend/bro, who must then get down on one knee and drink the entire bottle in one go. There are variations on the rules - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icing_(drinking_game) - but that's the gist. I managed to present John with a nearly-frozen Ice right in front of the Constitution, surely the first of its kind in the annals of Icing history.
After such Smirnoff summit shenanigans were over, we had to descend down a treacherous ice ridge to get off the peak. Later in the day, Will mentioned that a young American woman on one of his trips had died after slipping down the ice. I'm glad he mentioned that after, or I would have felt pretty nervous about the ice. And the Ice, for that matter.
The ice ridge took about an hour to get down, after which point we had another 3-hour descent to breakfast. Part of this involved an awesome scree slope that you could sprint down since it was so soft and gravelly - a great way to knock off 300 vertical meters of thin air in a half hour. This is me resting (in the orange) before the scree part:
After breakfast, a quick nap, and lunch, we had to hike for a further 8 hours through what was described as the "vertical bog." This essentially involved a trek through a muddy creek for many hours, about 3 of which we walked in the dark. The reward for the muddy trudging was our final camp, which was at a breathable 3,000-ish meters and had a very cozy bunk bed setup. I've never slept so well in my life.
Even one day after getting back, I am already starting to re-write the more grueling parts of the experience in my head. Only my right shoulder, quads and calves remind me that, while a good time with great people, it wasn't a bed of high-altitude roses.
Overall, it was a good experience, though: the food, the excellent company, the Smirnoff-related antics and the timing of our trip were all big pluses to the weekend. Nonetheless, I don't think that I'll plan on climbing any 4,000+ meter peaks in the near future.
But don't quote me on that.
* Accordingly to Wikipedia, the second-highest peak on each continent is more challenging than the tallest peak. As a result, the "Seven Summits" (the tallest peaks on each continent) have been completed by a number of experts, but the "Seven Second Summits" have not. Mount Kenya's technical summit (not the one I climbed) is one of the Seven Second Summits and is considerably harder than Kilimanjaro's Uhuru Peak, which is generally doable for tourists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Second_Summits
Photographs courtesy of Jane Del Ser and Charlene Chen.
Mount Kenya is a sacred mountain for many Kenyans. Several ethnic groups from the Central Highlands - the Meru, the Maasai and the Gikuyu - believe that the mountain is the home of Ngai, the supreme god and creator of the world. Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President, wrote a book, Facing Mount Kenya, which details the Gikuyu relationship with the mountain and Central Highlands culture.
This was an auspicious weekend to climb the mountain. Earlier this month, Kenyans population voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new national Constitution. Although we hadn't planned it that way, Friday (the day we began our ascent) was the day when the President, Vice-President and Prime Minister of Kenya formally "promulgated" the document and put into effect the Second Republic. Partly because current President Kibaki is Gikuyu, and partly out of Kenyan national pride, a small team of local climbers carried a copy of the Constitution to Lenana peak immediately after the signing. Because of the number of tourists on the mountain and the time we left, we stood to be among the first forty foreigners to see the special copy on top of Mount Kenya.
Of course, there's a catch: the whole climbing thing.
The obvious thing to write here is that the hike was wonderful: a pleasantly rugged trek, with a smiling, pink-cheeked Al marveling at the views from the summit and reveling in the achievement of getting to the top. But I won't lie: it was physically exhausting and, for at least a day, miserable.
The first day was fine. It was just a four-hour climb through light rain on a gravelly road, covering roughly 600 vertical meters. The first lodge we stayed at was similarly decent: a bit wet, but the food was great and the bunkbed dorm was fairly comfortable. I realized that we could have been in tents.
The second day was much tougher: a nine-hour climb through mostly decent weather, covering 900 vertical meters. We had to cross a number of ridges and some very swampy terrain, so there were a lot of ups and downs. Still, it was about 100 meters an hour in terms of vertical climb, which didn't sound awful to me.
I was doing very well until lunch when I got hit with altitude sickness all of a sudden. It's difficult to predict its symptoms for each person, but almost everyone in our group got it in one form or another. For me, it started as an intense headache, which I assumed was similar to a migraine. My temples throbbed, my head hurt and I felt a bit dizzy. As we got above 4,000 meters (2.5 miles), my breathing became very labored and I started coughing a lot. The rest of the group were facing similar things, so our pace slowed quite a bit.
The big advantage to the second day was seeing major shifts in climate and vegetation. Even at higher altitude, there's lots of interesting fauna as well: rock and tree Hyraxes (a sort of fat capybara-like thing related to an elephant); colobus monkeys; big grey monkeys that like to steal; lone buffaloes; crested eagles and buzzards.
The lodge at the second night was not a pleasant experience. I didn't have much of an appetite, although I did eat after taking half of a friend's Diamox, an altitude-sickness medicine. When I tried to sleep, I couldn't do it at first. I also had strange chills even though I could feel that my skin was hot. Weird! But in the end (probably thanks to the Diamox), I managed to fall asleep around 11 pm.
Before long, it was 2 am - time to get up for summit day. Our guide's biggest mistake was probably telling us that the final ascent would be easier than the previous day...
It was not. Whereas Day 2 involved a climb of 100 meters per hour (with an average altitude of 3,700), the summit climb involved a climb of 200 vertical meters per hour (at an average of 4,600 meters above sea level). This does not sound like much, but if you take into account safety stops, it turns into about 4 meters (vertical) per minute when you're actually climbing. At a high altitude, when hiking on ice or scree, this is pretty fast. By around 4 am, our conversation had stopped completely. We were like a team of foreign zombies trudging up the mountainside in the darkness. Or something.
After four hours we reached Lenana peak. It was pretty cool: a frozen Kenyan flag, some plaques of people that died, and a brand new glass-metal-clay shrine to the Second Republic, copy of the Constitution inside. We were probably among the first couple of dozen people ever to have seen it there.
Equally (ok, more) enjoyable, was a prank I played on John, one of the guys in our group. Some of you will already be familiar with the viral drinking phenomenon of "Bros Icing Bros." As those of you who are/were/know a 17-19 year old girl are aware, Smirnoff Ice is a sugary, lightly alcoholic, bottled drink (or alcopop) consumed almost exclusively by members of that demographic group.
But thanks to the recent Icing phenomenon, however, it has become normal for guys to foist a bottle of Smirnoff Ice on an unsuspecting friend/bro, who must then get down on one knee and drink the entire bottle in one go. There are variations on the rules - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icing_(drinking_game) - but that's the gist. I managed to present John with a nearly-frozen Ice right in front of the Constitution, surely the first of its kind in the annals of Icing history.
After such Smirnoff summit shenanigans were over, we had to descend down a treacherous ice ridge to get off the peak. Later in the day, Will mentioned that a young American woman on one of his trips had died after slipping down the ice. I'm glad he mentioned that after, or I would have felt pretty nervous about the ice. And the Ice, for that matter.
The ice ridge took about an hour to get down, after which point we had another 3-hour descent to breakfast. Part of this involved an awesome scree slope that you could sprint down since it was so soft and gravelly - a great way to knock off 300 vertical meters of thin air in a half hour. This is me resting (in the orange) before the scree part:
After breakfast, a quick nap, and lunch, we had to hike for a further 8 hours through what was described as the "vertical bog." This essentially involved a trek through a muddy creek for many hours, about 3 of which we walked in the dark. The reward for the muddy trudging was our final camp, which was at a breathable 3,000-ish meters and had a very cozy bunk bed setup. I've never slept so well in my life.
Even one day after getting back, I am already starting to re-write the more grueling parts of the experience in my head. Only my right shoulder, quads and calves remind me that, while a good time with great people, it wasn't a bed of high-altitude roses.
Overall, it was a good experience, though: the food, the excellent company, the Smirnoff-related antics and the timing of our trip were all big pluses to the weekend. Nonetheless, I don't think that I'll plan on climbing any 4,000+ meter peaks in the near future.
But don't quote me on that.
* Accordingly to Wikipedia, the second-highest peak on each continent is more challenging than the tallest peak. As a result, the "Seven Summits" (the tallest peaks on each continent) have been completed by a number of experts, but the "Seven Second Summits" have not. Mount Kenya's technical summit (not the one I climbed) is one of the Seven Second Summits and is considerably harder than Kilimanjaro's Uhuru Peak, which is generally doable for tourists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Second_Summits
Photographs courtesy of Jane Del Ser and Charlene Chen.
Minipax
I am in Kigali right now for a few meetings.
The Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, is a love-him-or-hate-him sort of guy. His proponents point to his ending the Rwandan genocide, rebuilding a shattered country and catapulting its economy ahead. His detractors often accuse him of running a police state, rigging elections and silently crushing political opposition. There is at least a grain of truth to those accusations*.
When I arrived late last night, I was trying to find the address for this morning's meeting. I asked my contact where to go. "Minijust," she said in English, using the semi-official nickname for the Ministry of Justice building.
Same thing happened for this afternoon's meeting at the Ministry of Commerce (Minicom). It's located in the joint Minicom-Minafet building (Minafet being the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The joint Minicom-Minafet building is also home to Mineac (the Ministry of East African Community Affairs). These contracted ministry names sounded familiar but I couldn't put my finger on where I'd heard them before.
In French, it is more common to have "syllable" acronyms (e.g., Societe de Transport Rwandaise becomes Sotrara) than in English, which uses "first letter" acryonyms (e.g., Rwanda Development Board becomes RDB). Even though this is a French-speaking country, I knew that something about the ministries names was odd.
It only just occurred to me where I heard this type of labeling before: George Orwell's 1984. The totalitarian Oceanian government in that novel did exactly the same thing with its evil ministries. Minipax was responsible for war; Miniluv for torturing people and running the secret police; Miniplenty for economic planning; and Minitrue for nationalist propaganda.
I don't know if Kagame realized this when he took over, but naming your ministries Oceania-style isn't a good idea for a regime accused of being a police state.
* For great professional coverage of this debate, read my roommate's recent article in the Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18b3a66e-a183-11df-9656-00144feabdc0.html
The Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, is a love-him-or-hate-him sort of guy. His proponents point to his ending the Rwandan genocide, rebuilding a shattered country and catapulting its economy ahead. His detractors often accuse him of running a police state, rigging elections and silently crushing political opposition. There is at least a grain of truth to those accusations*.
When I arrived late last night, I was trying to find the address for this morning's meeting. I asked my contact where to go. "Minijust," she said in English, using the semi-official nickname for the Ministry of Justice building.
Same thing happened for this afternoon's meeting at the Ministry of Commerce (Minicom). It's located in the joint Minicom-Minafet building (Minafet being the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). The joint Minicom-Minafet building is also home to Mineac (the Ministry of East African Community Affairs). These contracted ministry names sounded familiar but I couldn't put my finger on where I'd heard them before.
In French, it is more common to have "syllable" acronyms (e.g., Societe de Transport Rwandaise becomes Sotrara) than in English, which uses "first letter" acryonyms (e.g., Rwanda Development Board becomes RDB). Even though this is a French-speaking country, I knew that something about the ministries names was odd.
It only just occurred to me where I heard this type of labeling before: George Orwell's 1984. The totalitarian Oceanian government in that novel did exactly the same thing with its evil ministries. Minipax was responsible for war; Miniluv for torturing people and running the secret police; Miniplenty for economic planning; and Minitrue for nationalist propaganda.
I don't know if Kagame realized this when he took over, but naming your ministries Oceania-style isn't a good idea for a regime accused of being a police state.
* For great professional coverage of this debate, read my roommate's recent article in the Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18b3a66e-a183-11df-9656-00144feabdc0.html
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Oui, ça Buj
I'm writing this from my computer* in my hotel in Bujumbura.
This is my second time in the Burundian capital. Last summer, my friend Chrissy and I made a one-night trip from Rwanda to Burundi on the grounds that neither of us was going to get another chance. "Who even goes to Burundi?"
But, never say never. I'm back.
The contrast between my two trips is, well, pretty big. Last time, I traveled in with Yahoo!** Trans, sat next to locals eating goat-meat kebabs, wore shorts and flip-flops, hung out with my friends and partied with members of East African rap ensemble Klear Kut. This time, I jetted in on the early-morning flight, sitting next to development workers, and have been sweating in a suit most of the day. My hotel this time has a pool (compare with the particularly low showerhead which was the distinctive feature of last summer's accommodations). All of the above seems like a positive trajectory in my life.
The purpose of my trip was to meet with some civil servants - specifically, the ones who are leading Burundi's efforts to integrate with the EAC common market.
It's tough going for Burundi: they are the poorest in the EAC, recently suffered major ethnic violence (more Hutu-Tutsi stuff, in 2000) and have extremely poor infrastructure. Over half of its exports come from coffee and it has very little manufacturing base. When it comes to building the common market, they're again the odd man out. Burundi speaks French and relies on civil law, whereas the other countries speak English and rely on common law or a blend of both systems. When Burundian officials get EAC policy memos, they have to translate them into French before doing anything else, because there so few English speakers here. Many senior Burundian officials recognize that their laws and Constitution are out of date and ineffective but they don't have the manpower to change it. It's a difficult and frustrating situation for those that want to push for genuine reform.
But undercutting any self-driven reform is the poverty that the country contends with. Burundi has an annual GDP of one billion USD. To put that in perspective, the smallest of the Fortune 1000 companies has an annual revenue far greater than that. Those numbers are not really comparable (for some technical reasons) but they give you a sense of how low-income a place Burundi is.
Of course, a partial explanation for such a low GDP figure is that such a large percent of economic activity goes unreported. This is true for all African countries, but it even more true in Burundi given what I would describe as the national sketch factor.
On my last visit here, I was astonished by the disposible income of, and lavish spending by, a small subset of the population. When rich Bujumburans go out, they go out hard. Such free spending is hard to reconcile with one of the lowest GDP per capita figures in the world. Of course, there's an explanation for this that doesn't show up in official growth figures.
Burundians benefit from two non-standard sources of income: remittances and informal/dirty business. Remittances from relatives abroad are a major source of income for most developing countries. The young (who are typically men) leave to go to Europe and carve out a living there. When they have surplus funds, they send them home to their families in the villages. For many countries, including wealthier ones like Armenia, remittances are a large chunk of national income (or GNI). And for some families, especially in impoverished places like Burundi, remittances are a lifeline***.
But remittances aren't the only means of earning off-the-books cash. Burundi's location next to Goma in the Congo means that it is the natural transit point for goods being shipped to and from the Eastern DRC. In fact, because central DRC is so dangerous and impassable, Burundi is one of the few countries that has a natural supply line to the lucrative mines and security forces of the Congo. Since the mines make money, and security forces makes money, there is ample opportunity for some Burundians to make profits on the side, even if illegal.
My discussion of Burundi so far has focused on the economic and legal aspects of the country, which aren't great. But there are positives. Whether suit-clad or flip-flop-wearing, I have been consistently impressed with how friendly Burundians are. Take today, for instance: my scooter driver got lost and ended up on a completely different side of town from where I wanted to be. I was late for my meeting so I waved down a couple of local guys and asked them if they knew the directions, hoping one of them could save me a few minutes. Before I knew it, one of them had jumped in next to me and helped the driver navigate. He didn't leave until I was already inside the front gate of the place where my meeting was held. And last time, as Chrissy and I were leaving Saga Beach, we met some very friendly locals on the matatu ride back into town. People here are a lot of fun and very open to meeting foreigners.
I suppose an improbable third trip to Buj wouldn't be too bad after all.
* On an unrelated note, my computer is dying and my camera is somehow badly damaged and unable to take pictures. Something about me and electronics don't work. This means that you will get no pictures of Burundi, I'm afraid.
** A Kigali-based minibus company that adopted the internet company's name, exclamation point and logo for its branding. But given the age of the bus, I think Altavista Trans would have been more fitting.
*** Despite the horrific cut that wire transfer services like Western Union take on each payment (up to 15% for small transfers). I checked this very morning in the Interbank Office.
This is my second time in the Burundian capital. Last summer, my friend Chrissy and I made a one-night trip from Rwanda to Burundi on the grounds that neither of us was going to get another chance. "Who even goes to Burundi?"
But, never say never. I'm back.
The contrast between my two trips is, well, pretty big. Last time, I traveled in with Yahoo!** Trans, sat next to locals eating goat-meat kebabs, wore shorts and flip-flops, hung out with my friends and partied with members of East African rap ensemble Klear Kut. This time, I jetted in on the early-morning flight, sitting next to development workers, and have been sweating in a suit most of the day. My hotel this time has a pool (compare with the particularly low showerhead which was the distinctive feature of last summer's accommodations). All of the above seems like a positive trajectory in my life.
The purpose of my trip was to meet with some civil servants - specifically, the ones who are leading Burundi's efforts to integrate with the EAC common market.
It's tough going for Burundi: they are the poorest in the EAC, recently suffered major ethnic violence (more Hutu-Tutsi stuff, in 2000) and have extremely poor infrastructure. Over half of its exports come from coffee and it has very little manufacturing base. When it comes to building the common market, they're again the odd man out. Burundi speaks French and relies on civil law, whereas the other countries speak English and rely on common law or a blend of both systems. When Burundian officials get EAC policy memos, they have to translate them into French before doing anything else, because there so few English speakers here. Many senior Burundian officials recognize that their laws and Constitution are out of date and ineffective but they don't have the manpower to change it. It's a difficult and frustrating situation for those that want to push for genuine reform.
But undercutting any self-driven reform is the poverty that the country contends with. Burundi has an annual GDP of one billion USD. To put that in perspective, the smallest of the Fortune 1000 companies has an annual revenue far greater than that. Those numbers are not really comparable (for some technical reasons) but they give you a sense of how low-income a place Burundi is.
Of course, a partial explanation for such a low GDP figure is that such a large percent of economic activity goes unreported. This is true for all African countries, but it even more true in Burundi given what I would describe as the national sketch factor.
On my last visit here, I was astonished by the disposible income of, and lavish spending by, a small subset of the population. When rich Bujumburans go out, they go out hard. Such free spending is hard to reconcile with one of the lowest GDP per capita figures in the world. Of course, there's an explanation for this that doesn't show up in official growth figures.
Burundians benefit from two non-standard sources of income: remittances and informal/dirty business. Remittances from relatives abroad are a major source of income for most developing countries. The young (who are typically men) leave to go to Europe and carve out a living there. When they have surplus funds, they send them home to their families in the villages. For many countries, including wealthier ones like Armenia, remittances are a large chunk of national income (or GNI). And for some families, especially in impoverished places like Burundi, remittances are a lifeline***.
But remittances aren't the only means of earning off-the-books cash. Burundi's location next to Goma in the Congo means that it is the natural transit point for goods being shipped to and from the Eastern DRC. In fact, because central DRC is so dangerous and impassable, Burundi is one of the few countries that has a natural supply line to the lucrative mines and security forces of the Congo. Since the mines make money, and security forces makes money, there is ample opportunity for some Burundians to make profits on the side, even if illegal.
My discussion of Burundi so far has focused on the economic and legal aspects of the country, which aren't great. But there are positives. Whether suit-clad or flip-flop-wearing, I have been consistently impressed with how friendly Burundians are. Take today, for instance: my scooter driver got lost and ended up on a completely different side of town from where I wanted to be. I was late for my meeting so I waved down a couple of local guys and asked them if they knew the directions, hoping one of them could save me a few minutes. Before I knew it, one of them had jumped in next to me and helped the driver navigate. He didn't leave until I was already inside the front gate of the place where my meeting was held. And last time, as Chrissy and I were leaving Saga Beach, we met some very friendly locals on the matatu ride back into town. People here are a lot of fun and very open to meeting foreigners.
I suppose an improbable third trip to Buj wouldn't be too bad after all.
* On an unrelated note, my computer is dying and my camera is somehow badly damaged and unable to take pictures. Something about me and electronics don't work. This means that you will get no pictures of Burundi, I'm afraid.
** A Kigali-based minibus company that adopted the internet company's name, exclamation point and logo for its branding. But given the age of the bus, I think Altavista Trans would have been more fitting.
*** Despite the horrific cut that wire transfer services like Western Union take on each payment (up to 15% for small transfers). I checked this very morning in the Interbank Office.
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Acausted
This weekend, I took a trip with friends to the Great Rift Valley. The Rift Valley has been on my list for some time. It’s famous for national parks, game drives, spectacular views and some of the world’s most famous archeological sites with early Cro-Magnon fossils (including the famous Olduvai Gorge). The Kenyan Rift Valley is also a politically charged area: it was a hotbed of violence during the last Presidential election and was the only area firmly opposed to the new Constitution in this month's referendum.
But this weekend was all about the animals. Our trip included two mini-safaris: a walking safari on Crescent Island and a game drive in Nakuru National Park.
I had never done a walking safari before, but it was a cool experience. Crescent Island has no predators, so it’s safe to walk around and track down animals on foot. There are giraffes, hippos, zebras, a number of gazelle-like things, wildebeest and water buffalo.
The main advantage of a walking safari is that you can approach the animals on foot and generally interact with (read: harass) the various creatures. The highlight of the harassment was chasing a giraffe, some wildebeest and a small group of zebra. I learned that every animal there can run twice as fast as a sprinting human. I’m glad we’re not early Cro-Magnon hunters anymore. Or gatherers, for that matter. Here, tracking the animals:
On Saturday night we stayed at Maili Saba Tented Camp, a luxurious facility whose accommodation only loosely qualifies as “camping.” Instead of sleeping in normal tents on lumpy ground, Maili Saba is equipped with permanent luxury tents on platforms that contain large, comfortable beds covered with fresh white linens. Each tent has its own porch, hot shower and clean toilet, plus electric lighting installed into converted kerosene lanterns. The Camp is perched on the edge of a bluff overlooking the valley, so the views are spectacular.
As people who read my Ghana posts will know, I am currently migrating from the hostels-and-backpack phase of my life into the budget-hotels-and-rolling-luggage phase of my life. I guess I’m simply willing to pay a little more for the nicer touches.
After breakfast, we left with our guide to Nakuru National Park. Nakuru is one of two “premium parks” run by Kenya Wildlife Services, meaning that the animals are more interesting and the prices are higher. Nakuru is particularly famous for its abundant bird life and the presence of both black rhinos and the rarer white rhinos. I am not an ornithophile, but the birds at Nakuru were terrific: foul vulture-like Marabou Storks, giant flocks of flamingos and other exotic avian life whose names I’ve already forgotten (the Red-Crested Groundbill, maybe?)
Morning is the best time to visit the park since the predators feed then. We didn’t see any kills, but we did watch a pack of hyenas trying to isolate a baby water buffalo from the pack. They were unsuccessful; several adult buffalo managed to chase them away. While all this was going on, the larger animals, such as the adult rhinos, seemed completely unfazed. As long as you’re not the weakest, I guess you’re ok. An unfazed rhino:
While we were watching the hyenas we came across a rare white rhino. There are fewer than sixty in the whole park, so it was a great find. At one point, we saw a white rhino and black rhino – both adult males – facing each other across a distance of about 75 yards and slowly closing the gap. Although adult males from different species occasionally attack each other, these two decided to be gentlemanly; the white rhino turned around and lay down by the road:
The most hair-raising experience of the weekend was not, however, a close encounter with wildlife; it was a run-in with a disgruntled tanker driver. Halfway back to Nairobi, a large white tanker swerved in front of our van and braked sharply, trying to force us off the road. When the tanker pulled onto the shoulder, our driver dodged around it and kept driving. All of us muttered something about crazy Kenyan drivers, including our driver. It’s true: Kenyan drivers are dangerous, with recklessness roughly proportional to vehicle size. So the tanker’s erratic swerving didn’t really shock us.
Ten minutes later and many miles down the road, as we were rounding a highway on-ramp, the same white tanker tried to force us off the road again. This time was worse than the first: he nearly clipped us, forcing our van to swerve right onto the shoulder. With the oncoming traffic, the on-ramp was so tight that we were trapped behind the tanker and had to pull over and stop. Our guide, Boniface, was very mad at this point and decided to sort things out. He marched up to the cabin of the tanker and started yelling at the guy.
This went on for a few minutes. The shouting match attracted the attention of a police officer who pulled over. He probably saw a chance to investigate possible wrongdoing and discover bribe-taking opportunities (known locally as “eating”).
The tanker driver was yelling in Swahili that our driver had hit his tanker and caused a dent in the side. Our driver pointed out that our van had no dents and that the tanker must have been mistaken, which was definitely true. I think that the tanker driver was probably looking to pin the blame for his dent on someone and force them to pay the cost of repairs. Before long, the two drivers were soon screaming at each other, with the policeman yelling and gesturing his baton menacingly at both of them.
I decided to step in at this point. I walked up to the officer and told him in my best Swahili that the other man had tried to run us off the road twice but that I was absolutely certain that we hadn’t hit the tanker.
The tanker driver looked like he would have hit me if the policeman wasn’t there, but things seemed to turn around in our favor. The policeman got very loud at this point and told the tanker driver that he was trying to hit our van “like it was full of luggage” and that “he was trying to kill people like animals.” The officer told us we could leave, just before grabbing the other driver by the arm and taking him behind the tanker. I’m not sure what happened at this point, but I think that the tanker driver probably regretted his decision to try and knock us off the road.
As we pulled away, I noticed English writing on the back of the tanker: “WARNING: Caustic Soda. DANGEROUS.” I guess it was a closer call than I realized.
But this weekend was all about the animals. Our trip included two mini-safaris: a walking safari on Crescent Island and a game drive in Nakuru National Park.
I had never done a walking safari before, but it was a cool experience. Crescent Island has no predators, so it’s safe to walk around and track down animals on foot. There are giraffes, hippos, zebras, a number of gazelle-like things, wildebeest and water buffalo.
The main advantage of a walking safari is that you can approach the animals on foot and generally interact with (read: harass) the various creatures. The highlight of the harassment was chasing a giraffe, some wildebeest and a small group of zebra. I learned that every animal there can run twice as fast as a sprinting human. I’m glad we’re not early Cro-Magnon hunters anymore. Or gatherers, for that matter. Here, tracking the animals:
On Saturday night we stayed at Maili Saba Tented Camp, a luxurious facility whose accommodation only loosely qualifies as “camping.” Instead of sleeping in normal tents on lumpy ground, Maili Saba is equipped with permanent luxury tents on platforms that contain large, comfortable beds covered with fresh white linens. Each tent has its own porch, hot shower and clean toilet, plus electric lighting installed into converted kerosene lanterns. The Camp is perched on the edge of a bluff overlooking the valley, so the views are spectacular.
As people who read my Ghana posts will know, I am currently migrating from the hostels-and-backpack phase of my life into the budget-hotels-and-rolling-luggage phase of my life. I guess I’m simply willing to pay a little more for the nicer touches.
After breakfast, we left with our guide to Nakuru National Park. Nakuru is one of two “premium parks” run by Kenya Wildlife Services, meaning that the animals are more interesting and the prices are higher. Nakuru is particularly famous for its abundant bird life and the presence of both black rhinos and the rarer white rhinos. I am not an ornithophile, but the birds at Nakuru were terrific: foul vulture-like Marabou Storks, giant flocks of flamingos and other exotic avian life whose names I’ve already forgotten (the Red-Crested Groundbill, maybe?)
Morning is the best time to visit the park since the predators feed then. We didn’t see any kills, but we did watch a pack of hyenas trying to isolate a baby water buffalo from the pack. They were unsuccessful; several adult buffalo managed to chase them away. While all this was going on, the larger animals, such as the adult rhinos, seemed completely unfazed. As long as you’re not the weakest, I guess you’re ok. An unfazed rhino:
While we were watching the hyenas we came across a rare white rhino. There are fewer than sixty in the whole park, so it was a great find. At one point, we saw a white rhino and black rhino – both adult males – facing each other across a distance of about 75 yards and slowly closing the gap. Although adult males from different species occasionally attack each other, these two decided to be gentlemanly; the white rhino turned around and lay down by the road:
The most hair-raising experience of the weekend was not, however, a close encounter with wildlife; it was a run-in with a disgruntled tanker driver. Halfway back to Nairobi, a large white tanker swerved in front of our van and braked sharply, trying to force us off the road. When the tanker pulled onto the shoulder, our driver dodged around it and kept driving. All of us muttered something about crazy Kenyan drivers, including our driver. It’s true: Kenyan drivers are dangerous, with recklessness roughly proportional to vehicle size. So the tanker’s erratic swerving didn’t really shock us.
Ten minutes later and many miles down the road, as we were rounding a highway on-ramp, the same white tanker tried to force us off the road again. This time was worse than the first: he nearly clipped us, forcing our van to swerve right onto the shoulder. With the oncoming traffic, the on-ramp was so tight that we were trapped behind the tanker and had to pull over and stop. Our guide, Boniface, was very mad at this point and decided to sort things out. He marched up to the cabin of the tanker and started yelling at the guy.
This went on for a few minutes. The shouting match attracted the attention of a police officer who pulled over. He probably saw a chance to investigate possible wrongdoing and discover bribe-taking opportunities (known locally as “eating”).
The tanker driver was yelling in Swahili that our driver had hit his tanker and caused a dent in the side. Our driver pointed out that our van had no dents and that the tanker must have been mistaken, which was definitely true. I think that the tanker driver was probably looking to pin the blame for his dent on someone and force them to pay the cost of repairs. Before long, the two drivers were soon screaming at each other, with the policeman yelling and gesturing his baton menacingly at both of them.
I decided to step in at this point. I walked up to the officer and told him in my best Swahili that the other man had tried to run us off the road twice but that I was absolutely certain that we hadn’t hit the tanker.
The tanker driver looked like he would have hit me if the policeman wasn’t there, but things seemed to turn around in our favor. The policeman got very loud at this point and told the tanker driver that he was trying to hit our van “like it was full of luggage” and that “he was trying to kill people like animals.” The officer told us we could leave, just before grabbing the other driver by the arm and taking him behind the tanker. I’m not sure what happened at this point, but I think that the tanker driver probably regretted his decision to try and knock us off the road.
As we pulled away, I noticed English writing on the back of the tanker: “WARNING: Caustic Soda. DANGEROUS.” I guess it was a closer call than I realized.
Monday, 16 August 2010
Arushanal Exhuberance
I write this post from the lounge-bar of the beautiful Kibo Hotel in Arusha. I came down this morning to Arusha to meet with officials at the EAC Secretariat, which is headquartered here. This post would be perfect with a few photographs, but alas - Tanzanian internet speed makes it difficult to access gmail, let alone upload images. Sluggish connections sure bring back the memories of Dar.
This may sound strange, but I love visiting the EAC Secretariat building. It's located in a facility known as the AICC, a once-futuristic, now-amusing superstructure from the post-Independence period. There is a certain epoch in post-War, functionalist construction that I love, a time when buildings and structures were designed to look futuristic and space-age. The Washington Metro system was built in this period; it looks like how people thought the future would look in 1950. So too with the AICC. On the outside, slender, arched walkways connect three blocky-looking towers. Inside, custom-made elevators with absurdly small, diagonally offset buttons carry passengers up to the brightly carpeted reception area, which is lined with large fake plants. The walls are lined with the heads of state of the East African countries and the Secretary General of the EAC, as well as earlier batches of politicians from the seventies and eighties. The carpeting, nameplates and reception area remind me (for some weird reason) of how Brazil would have looked 25 years ago.
My favorite part of going, however, are the job titles posted on people's doors: Principal Legal Officer; Principal Planning and Strategy Officer; Health Care Specialist, Disease Control; Assistant Deputy Comptroller; Chief Agronomist; Assistant Meterologist.
Assistant Meteorologist!? They have a skeleton staff of 150 people and two meteorologists? Can't they just get the Weather Channel instead?
Another perk to visiting Arusha is the fine living. Arusha is blessed with plentiful international-grade infrastructure thanks to its close proximity to Kili, Mount Meru, Olduvai Gorge and Ngorongoro National Park. The hordes of tourists that descend here year-round drive up prices but also stimulate supply. I am currently staying at the Kibo Hotel, a fine specimen of such supply.
For the most part, anyway. I checked in this morning somewhat in a rush, distracted by a phone call I was on. I took the room card from the receptionist and walked up to my room on the second floor. Only after I hung up the phone did it occur to me that I had literally walked right in; there was no door to the room! I called a porter who came up and inspected the open door frame with concern: "would you like us to bring a door or get you a new room?" You've got to give them points for service at least.
My new room, by the way, comes with door, bed, shower, toilet and television. I checked.
A fancy hotel like this has a fancy tourist shop, of course. This one sells gold, silver and precious stones. One of the stones they sell is tanzanite, a precious gem found exclusively in Northern Tanzania. It is one of the most precious stones in existence. For points of comparison from the shop here at Kibo, cut and polished amethysts go for $15 per carat, rubies for $60, emeralds for $200 and tanzanite for $400. It's a ghostly blue-purple color and is very beautiful, but I would rather than a giant amethyst than a tiny tanzanite any day.
The only downside to staying in a tourist hotel is that it means that I am stuck working (ok: blogging) while happy bands of foreigners down bottles of Kilimanjaro and talk about climbing Kilimanjaro. But I really shouldn't begrudge my fleece-bedecked counterparts. I'm planning on climbing Mount Kenya in a couple of weeks which should be a great experience in itself.
This may sound strange, but I love visiting the EAC Secretariat building. It's located in a facility known as the AICC, a once-futuristic, now-amusing superstructure from the post-Independence period. There is a certain epoch in post-War, functionalist construction that I love, a time when buildings and structures were designed to look futuristic and space-age. The Washington Metro system was built in this period; it looks like how people thought the future would look in 1950. So too with the AICC. On the outside, slender, arched walkways connect three blocky-looking towers. Inside, custom-made elevators with absurdly small, diagonally offset buttons carry passengers up to the brightly carpeted reception area, which is lined with large fake plants. The walls are lined with the heads of state of the East African countries and the Secretary General of the EAC, as well as earlier batches of politicians from the seventies and eighties. The carpeting, nameplates and reception area remind me (for some weird reason) of how Brazil would have looked 25 years ago.
My favorite part of going, however, are the job titles posted on people's doors: Principal Legal Officer; Principal Planning and Strategy Officer; Health Care Specialist, Disease Control; Assistant Deputy Comptroller; Chief Agronomist; Assistant Meterologist.
Assistant Meteorologist!? They have a skeleton staff of 150 people and two meteorologists? Can't they just get the Weather Channel instead?
Another perk to visiting Arusha is the fine living. Arusha is blessed with plentiful international-grade infrastructure thanks to its close proximity to Kili, Mount Meru, Olduvai Gorge and Ngorongoro National Park. The hordes of tourists that descend here year-round drive up prices but also stimulate supply. I am currently staying at the Kibo Hotel, a fine specimen of such supply.
For the most part, anyway. I checked in this morning somewhat in a rush, distracted by a phone call I was on. I took the room card from the receptionist and walked up to my room on the second floor. Only after I hung up the phone did it occur to me that I had literally walked right in; there was no door to the room! I called a porter who came up and inspected the open door frame with concern: "would you like us to bring a door or get you a new room?" You've got to give them points for service at least.
My new room, by the way, comes with door, bed, shower, toilet and television. I checked.
A fancy hotel like this has a fancy tourist shop, of course. This one sells gold, silver and precious stones. One of the stones they sell is tanzanite, a precious gem found exclusively in Northern Tanzania. It is one of the most precious stones in existence. For points of comparison from the shop here at Kibo, cut and polished amethysts go for $15 per carat, rubies for $60, emeralds for $200 and tanzanite for $400. It's a ghostly blue-purple color and is very beautiful, but I would rather than a giant amethyst than a tiny tanzanite any day.
The only downside to staying in a tourist hotel is that it means that I am stuck working (ok: blogging) while happy bands of foreigners down bottles of Kilimanjaro and talk about climbing Kilimanjaro. But I really shouldn't begrudge my fleece-bedecked counterparts. I'm planning on climbing Mount Kenya in a couple of weeks which should be a great experience in itself.
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Community Building
As I mentioned in my first Kenyan post, a big part of my job is working with the East African Community (or EAC for short). If 2010 is a big year for Kenya, it is huge year for East Africa.
The EAC has a long history that dates back to the African pre-Independence period. Then, the EAC consisted of only Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. It was a short-lived regional fling; for ten years the members bickered about differences in political and economic policy. As I mentioned before, Tanzania was socialist and Kenya more capitalist. The final blow to the EAC came when Idi Amin rose to power in Uganda and did the whole crazy dictator thing. The leaders of Kenya and Tanzania refused to work with him and the old Community soon collapsed.
In more recent times, the leaders of East Africa's Great Lakes countries (Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) have rebuilt the EAC. And these recent efforts have been much more promising. For many years now, the new (5 member) EAC has been making progress towards customs, legal, monetary and even political integration.
So what is regional integration exactly? It means that neighboring countries join up in some way, perform certain government functions jointly, or lower the barriers between their countries. Some familiar examples of regional blocs for Western readers include the EU, NAFTA, NATO, OPEC and ASEAN -- although those organizations are all very different from each other.
Integration usually happens in steps; it takes time, and deeper integration efforts need to build on the simpler, earlier steps. There isn't agreement among experts on how integration needs to happen. One professor of African regionalism I spoke with, Dr. Richard Oppong from Lancaster University, sees integration as taking place over six discrete steps. But I would argue that there are five:
1. Technical cooperation (helping each other out on crime, infrastructure, tech. investment, education. example: cooperation among police forces)
2. Legal harmonization (agreeing to make each other's laws similar to trade, business, investment or further cooperation. examples: the OHADA countries in West Africa agreed to a uniform commercial law; OAS has a supranational human rights courts)
3. Common market (putting in place some form of free movement of goods, people and money. example: NAFTA; the EU)
4. Monetary union (having one currency. examples: EU, Eastern Caribbean Currency Zone, French West Africa)
5. Political federation (becoming one nation-state. examples: USA, UAE, Germany and Italy)
Things get more serious (or integrated) as you move down the list. Almost all countries take part in step (1), and very few have reached step (5). There are a variety of possibilities: early in American history, the US had achieved steps (3)-(5) but purposefully avoided any significant technical cooperation or legal harmonization at the state level. It's one country, but each state can do many things their own way. The EU is the opposite: member countries share a common market, a European Parliament, minimum human-rights standards and the Euro, yet each country retains its statehood and national identity.
So is integration a good thing? That's a tough question, but I tend to think that regional arrangements have a lot to offer.
A basic justification for regional arrangements is the benefit of comparative advantage. In the EAC, for instance, wealthy Kenyans have capital to invest, Uganda has surplus labor it can provide, and Tanzania has large stretches of arable land and a stable political climate. By combining those three factors of production, the three countries are jointly better off than if they operated independently. Rwanda -- self-promoted as the "Switzerland of Africa" -- has tremendous security*, good infrastructure and limited corruption and red tape; the other countries hope it could become a hub of agribusiness, banking, investment and insurance. By removing the barriers to cross-border trade and movement of workers, a common market can help the region grow.
There are also substantial benefits for countries that could come the stabilization offered by having a single currency: no exchange rate risk between local currencies, no issues swapping francs for shillings at border crossings, smaller fluctuations in currency prices, and greater facilitation of cross-border investment. Enough people have written about this that I won't go into it here, but it's probably a plus if the common currency happens and the member states have reached the necessary macroeconomic convergence,.
A third reason (not often voiced) is that the final stage of political federation will break the control of powerful ethnic groups over the national governments. In the past, Baganda control of Uganda, Gikuyu power in Kenya, or Hutu/Tutsi domination in Burundi and Rwanda have led to major bouts of conflict, patronage politics, anger and even genocide. In the EAC, no single ethnic group can possibly achieve a majority or even a strong enough position to dominate the region's politics.
Of course, there is a gap between the potential of regional blocs and the reality; they don't always work out so well. Many regional groups stagnate as toothless and uninteresting entities with nice websites and no real power (think the African Maghreb Union or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). Even when they do work, their disintegration can get ugly (think Yugoslavia, the Central American Common Market, or even the Soviet Union).
The East African Community is a region with strong fundamental characteristics in terms of regional potential. Perhaps more importantly, there is considerable political will among the current five heads of state to try and make the agreement work. The EAC leaders committed to an extremely ambitious timeframe for its integration process: customs union by 2005, common market (free movement of people, goods, money) by 2010, a common currency by 2012, and full political federation by 2015. The customs union is in place, as is the common market, although there are a number of implementation problems (which is where my work comes in). Most analysts believe that 2012 is too early for the region to successfully launch a common currency, and many people believe that the political federation (e.g., forming a single United States of East Africa) will never happen at all. Despite the problems the Community faces, however, progress so far has been quite good.
My work itself focuses on building the EAC's common market. One of the main challenges facing the region's common market is the differences in the business laws in each of the countries. When the laws for businesses are very different across countries, investors and workers find it harder to do cross-border business.
Here are a few examples of why this matters. Imagine an dairy-industry entrepreneur from Mombasa who wants to set up a factory in Rwanda. She has a registered, licensed company in Kenya and her Kenyan products conform to national standards. Suppose that Rwanda has completely different rules for the quality of milk, the way the businesswoman runs her factory, and the licenses she needs to obtain... setting up shop in Rwanda is going to be a nightmare. The entrepreneur might not even go at all. If the business rules different enough across countries, many investors (who mostly come from Kenya) will be afraid to invest elsewhere in the region.
Other problems relate to something known as "private international law," which means the laws that apply to deals between people from different countries. Imagine what happens if a Uganda businessman comes to Tanzania and wants to set up a contract with a Tanzanian producer. Suppose that the Tanzanian party is worried about being cheated by the Ugandan businessman in a contract. The Tanzanian could take the Uganda to Tanzanian court and probably win, but winning (getting a "judgment") is no good unless the Ugandan courts agree to enforce it. If they don't, the Tanzanian won't do business with the Uganda in the first place because he knows that he has no way to protect himself.
So you get the idea. There are dozens of areas of law that need to be harmonized for the common market to work, and it needs to happen soon. To make matters trickier, the English-speaking members have a common law legal system, whereas the French-speaking countries have a continental-type civil code (like most of Europe).
My day-to-day work involves working with law reform experts in each of the 5 member countries and planning what laws need to be reformed, and when that harmonization will takes place. Fortunately, I won't have to actually sit down and comb through all the various laws to be harmonized. That work is best done by politicians and lawyers; my work is about picking what laws need to be harmonized. In the upcoming weeks, I'll probably head to many of the national capitals to talk with the relevant officials in person.
The work is exciting for a couple of reasons. The project is a chance to work with senior politicians, integration experts and lawyers from all five of the EAC countries. Those I've met so far have been talented and eager for outside support. It's a fascinating glimpse inside the struggles of career technocrats who are trying to build something important while navigating tricky political waters and stretched Ministry budgets.
But the main reason it’s exciting is that EAC integration is probably a one-time shot. Regional blocs very rarely organize and try for a complete economic and political union. Most of the time, they flounder at early stages of technical cooperation or dissolve after inter-member conflict (such as after Central America's "soccer war"). The EAC already failed once. Most politicians here recognize that if it fails again, the vision of a united East Africa will probably be gone for good.
On the other hand, The EAC is the most advanced of Africa's official Regional Economic Communities. If integration works out, it could raise a rally flag for regionalism in Africa and prove to other countries that a successful union is possible.
The next few years will be decisive. I feel lucky to be working on this project at such an interesting time.
The EAC has a long history that dates back to the African pre-Independence period. Then, the EAC consisted of only Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. It was a short-lived regional fling; for ten years the members bickered about differences in political and economic policy. As I mentioned before, Tanzania was socialist and Kenya more capitalist. The final blow to the EAC came when Idi Amin rose to power in Uganda and did the whole crazy dictator thing. The leaders of Kenya and Tanzania refused to work with him and the old Community soon collapsed.
In more recent times, the leaders of East Africa's Great Lakes countries (Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) have rebuilt the EAC. And these recent efforts have been much more promising. For many years now, the new (5 member) EAC has been making progress towards customs, legal, monetary and even political integration.
So what is regional integration exactly? It means that neighboring countries join up in some way, perform certain government functions jointly, or lower the barriers between their countries. Some familiar examples of regional blocs for Western readers include the EU, NAFTA, NATO, OPEC and ASEAN -- although those organizations are all very different from each other.
Integration usually happens in steps; it takes time, and deeper integration efforts need to build on the simpler, earlier steps. There isn't agreement among experts on how integration needs to happen. One professor of African regionalism I spoke with, Dr. Richard Oppong from Lancaster University, sees integration as taking place over six discrete steps. But I would argue that there are five:
1. Technical cooperation (helping each other out on crime, infrastructure, tech. investment, education. example: cooperation among police forces)
2. Legal harmonization (agreeing to make each other's laws similar to trade, business, investment or further cooperation. examples: the OHADA countries in West Africa agreed to a uniform commercial law; OAS has a supranational human rights courts)
3. Common market (putting in place some form of free movement of goods, people and money. example: NAFTA; the EU)
4. Monetary union (having one currency. examples: EU, Eastern Caribbean Currency Zone, French West Africa)
5. Political federation (becoming one nation-state. examples: USA, UAE, Germany and Italy)
Things get more serious (or integrated) as you move down the list. Almost all countries take part in step (1), and very few have reached step (5). There are a variety of possibilities: early in American history, the US had achieved steps (3)-(5) but purposefully avoided any significant technical cooperation or legal harmonization at the state level. It's one country, but each state can do many things their own way. The EU is the opposite: member countries share a common market, a European Parliament, minimum human-rights standards and the Euro, yet each country retains its statehood and national identity.
So is integration a good thing? That's a tough question, but I tend to think that regional arrangements have a lot to offer.
A basic justification for regional arrangements is the benefit of comparative advantage. In the EAC, for instance, wealthy Kenyans have capital to invest, Uganda has surplus labor it can provide, and Tanzania has large stretches of arable land and a stable political climate. By combining those three factors of production, the three countries are jointly better off than if they operated independently. Rwanda -- self-promoted as the "Switzerland of Africa" -- has tremendous security*, good infrastructure and limited corruption and red tape; the other countries hope it could become a hub of agribusiness, banking, investment and insurance. By removing the barriers to cross-border trade and movement of workers, a common market can help the region grow.
There are also substantial benefits for countries that could come the stabilization offered by having a single currency: no exchange rate risk between local currencies, no issues swapping francs for shillings at border crossings, smaller fluctuations in currency prices, and greater facilitation of cross-border investment. Enough people have written about this that I won't go into it here, but it's probably a plus if the common currency happens and the member states have reached the necessary macroeconomic convergence,.
A third reason (not often voiced) is that the final stage of political federation will break the control of powerful ethnic groups over the national governments. In the past, Baganda control of Uganda, Gikuyu power in Kenya, or Hutu/Tutsi domination in Burundi and Rwanda have led to major bouts of conflict, patronage politics, anger and even genocide. In the EAC, no single ethnic group can possibly achieve a majority or even a strong enough position to dominate the region's politics.
Of course, there is a gap between the potential of regional blocs and the reality; they don't always work out so well. Many regional groups stagnate as toothless and uninteresting entities with nice websites and no real power (think the African Maghreb Union or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). Even when they do work, their disintegration can get ugly (think Yugoslavia, the Central American Common Market, or even the Soviet Union).
The East African Community is a region with strong fundamental characteristics in terms of regional potential. Perhaps more importantly, there is considerable political will among the current five heads of state to try and make the agreement work. The EAC leaders committed to an extremely ambitious timeframe for its integration process: customs union by 2005, common market (free movement of people, goods, money) by 2010, a common currency by 2012, and full political federation by 2015. The customs union is in place, as is the common market, although there are a number of implementation problems (which is where my work comes in). Most analysts believe that 2012 is too early for the region to successfully launch a common currency, and many people believe that the political federation (e.g., forming a single United States of East Africa) will never happen at all. Despite the problems the Community faces, however, progress so far has been quite good.
My work itself focuses on building the EAC's common market. One of the main challenges facing the region's common market is the differences in the business laws in each of the countries. When the laws for businesses are very different across countries, investors and workers find it harder to do cross-border business.
Here are a few examples of why this matters. Imagine an dairy-industry entrepreneur from Mombasa who wants to set up a factory in Rwanda. She has a registered, licensed company in Kenya and her Kenyan products conform to national standards. Suppose that Rwanda has completely different rules for the quality of milk, the way the businesswoman runs her factory, and the licenses she needs to obtain... setting up shop in Rwanda is going to be a nightmare. The entrepreneur might not even go at all. If the business rules different enough across countries, many investors (who mostly come from Kenya) will be afraid to invest elsewhere in the region.
Other problems relate to something known as "private international law," which means the laws that apply to deals between people from different countries. Imagine what happens if a Uganda businessman comes to Tanzania and wants to set up a contract with a Tanzanian producer. Suppose that the Tanzanian party is worried about being cheated by the Ugandan businessman in a contract. The Tanzanian could take the Uganda to Tanzanian court and probably win, but winning (getting a "judgment") is no good unless the Ugandan courts agree to enforce it. If they don't, the Tanzanian won't do business with the Uganda in the first place because he knows that he has no way to protect himself.
So you get the idea. There are dozens of areas of law that need to be harmonized for the common market to work, and it needs to happen soon. To make matters trickier, the English-speaking members have a common law legal system, whereas the French-speaking countries have a continental-type civil code (like most of Europe).
My day-to-day work involves working with law reform experts in each of the 5 member countries and planning what laws need to be reformed, and when that harmonization will takes place. Fortunately, I won't have to actually sit down and comb through all the various laws to be harmonized. That work is best done by politicians and lawyers; my work is about picking what laws need to be harmonized. In the upcoming weeks, I'll probably head to many of the national capitals to talk with the relevant officials in person.
The work is exciting for a couple of reasons. The project is a chance to work with senior politicians, integration experts and lawyers from all five of the EAC countries. Those I've met so far have been talented and eager for outside support. It's a fascinating glimpse inside the struggles of career technocrats who are trying to build something important while navigating tricky political waters and stretched Ministry budgets.
But the main reason it’s exciting is that EAC integration is probably a one-time shot. Regional blocs very rarely organize and try for a complete economic and political union. Most of the time, they flounder at early stages of technical cooperation or dissolve after inter-member conflict (such as after Central America's "soccer war"). The EAC already failed once. Most politicians here recognize that if it fails again, the vision of a united East Africa will probably be gone for good.
On the other hand, The EAC is the most advanced of Africa's official Regional Economic Communities. If integration works out, it could raise a rally flag for regionalism in Africa and prove to other countries that a successful union is possible.
The next few years will be decisive. I feel lucky to be working on this project at such an interesting time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
